This is the time of year when Californians with a vested interest in particular pieces of legislation wring their hands and wait. Hundreds of bills now sit on the notoriously unpredictable Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for a signature that will turn them into law, or a big fat veto.

Mark Snyder is watching one in particular. It would make California the first state to legally recognize nonbinary people — those who don’t consider themselves male or female — on all state-issued identification. In June, Oregon changed its driver’s licenses so residents there can choose M for male, F for female or X for neither, but California’s would extend that option to birth certificates and other pieces of state ID.

“We’re certainly on our way out of the shadows now,” said the 34-year-old Snyder, a San Francisco resident who identifies as nonbinary and works as the director of communications for Equality Federation, a national LGBTQ civil rights organization.

The bill would also make it easier for transgender people to change their names and genders on state documents because they no longer would have to appear in court with a doctor’s signature verifying that they’ve received appropriate medical treatment. In addition, the bill would allow those under 18 to change their gender designations, which currently is prohibited. …

California is first in the nation to agree to pay for a transgender inmate’s sex reassignment operation, but the state’s settlement of a recent court case sidesteps the question of whether such surgery is a constitutional right.

The state concedes that Shiloh Quine, who entered the California prison system in 1980 as Rodney, suffers severe gender dysphoria that can be treated only by physically conforming her body to her psychological gender.

The agreement to settle Quine’s federal lawsuit seeking the surgery was announced late Friday, with a brief statement from the corrections department that “every medical doctor and mental health clinician who has reviewed this case, including two independent mental health experts, determined that this surgery is medically necessary for Quine.”